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A Dying Mother’s Letter

By Lisa Belkin December 9, 2010 11:20 amDecember 9, 2010 11:20 am

Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Maybe it is because I write a parenting blog. Probably it is simply because I am a parent. Whatever the reason, I spent yesterday thinking of the youngest Edwards children, 12-year-old Emma Claire and 10-year-old Jack — of the lifelong pain that comes from losing a parent so young, and of the searing sadness that parent feels, knowing she will be leaving.

I remembered a story I read years ago, about how Elizabeth Edwards was readying her children for the day she would die. She was writing them a letter — a primer of sorts — about everything a mother realizes she won’t be there to say. I tracked that story down yesterday, to a 2007 article by the People magazine reporter Sandra Sobieraj Westfall, written when John Edwards was still in the presidential race. It said:

There is a letter Elizabeth Edwards has been writing, on and off, ever since she saw “Terms of Endearment,” the 1983 movie in which a dying mother leaves behind advice for her children. Edwards’s version, although titled “dying letter” on her computer, is actually more a guide to living for the three children she is preparing to someday leave behind. “It’s more than ‘How do you get the core out of a head of lettuce?’ ” Edwards says while taking a break during a campaign stop in Iowa. “It’s ‘How you choose who you marry and what to expect from that, how you choose a church.’ ” Looking across a playground at her two youngest monkeying on the jungle gym, she chuckles: “It’s got all that butting-my-nose-into-their-lives-long-after-I’m-gone stuff.”

On Good Morning America yesterday morning, Westfall recalled asking Elizabeth about that letter just a few months ago. Was it finished, she wondered, or was there still tweaking and adding to do?

“I’ll never be done,” Westphall says Edwards answered. “A mother is never finished giving advice to her children.”

I have been mentally composing a letter of life advice to my boys for the past 24 hours, but I am daunted by the enormity of the task. Where to begin? What to include?

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We're all living the family dynamic, as parents, as children, as siblings, uncles and aunts. At Motherlode, lead writer and editor KJ Dell’Antonia invites contributors and commenters to explore how our families affect our lives, and how the news affects our families—and all families. Join us to talk about education, child care, mealtime, sports, technology, the work-family balance and much more